Thanks A Million is, like most of the Dick Powell comedies of the mid-1930s, a pip, a perfect example of a neglected gem. It fits somewhere on the line of Depression-era political satire-comedies that stretches from Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932) to The Devil and Miss Jones (1941). In many respects it follows the template of the archetypal Dick Powell musical: cheerful young crooner who just needs an opportunity to sing for the world gets his chance with the support of his less-ambitious performer sweetheart and becomes an overnight radio sensation; success is clouded by disillusionment in the shady terms of his stardom; integrity requires him to abandon the stage, but in the end he’s brought back with the help of his sweetheart and friends, and is restored to stardom on his own terms. Most of Powell’s Warner comedies are sweet, intimate American success stories about working art: work hard on your talent, make the most of your one shot, take your licks and stay decent, and eventually you will be everybody’s favorite beamish boy.
Thanks A Million takes that story into Mark Twain territory and what will eventually become the domain of Preston Sturges. Powell’s comedies are best when he’s opposite a good actor playing a fast-talking huckster manager-figure, his worldly complement. Ned Sparks had the role in Gold Diggers of 1933, Adolphe Menjou had it in Broadway Gondolier, Pat O’Brien had it in Twenty Million Sweethearts, and Fred Allen has it in Thanks A Million. While these films’ stories include bona fide romances, the most interesting and funniest relationships are between these two Depression-era male types: the smart and pure-hearted but tempted pop artist and the corner-cutting ballyhoo man just barely evolved from a carnival barker. Allen is terrific in the film. Before seeing it, I knew him only as the comedy superstar of early radio. He acted in only a few films — Thanks A Million was the first. It’s a pity there are so few of them. His deadpan delivery and economy of movement disguises the speed and wit of his wisecracking putdowns. I can see how this works on radio, but he made it work in films too.
The script is by Nunnally Johnson, one of the great Hollywood screenwriters of the time. Powell and Allen are the leads, but the movie’s real star is Johnson. He takes the feckless just-trying-to-make-it-in-show-biz plot and makes it political. The result is a satire that’s downright prescient: once you marry democracy with mass media, entertainment is political power.
Here’s the story: crooner Eric Land (Powell) and troupe-manager Ned Lyman (Allen) ride a bus with their down-on-their-luck itinerant jazzband, headed for New York City. It’s raining cats and dogs. They have to change buses in a podunk town, a few miles from where Eric was raised. While they wait, they sit in on a mind-numbing stump speech by Judge E. Darius Culliman (Raymond Walburn), a cartoonish, clueless, dipso blowhard running as the Commonwealth Party’s candidate for governor. Lyman has a brainstorm. He’ll hire himself and the band out to Culliman and the party to liven up the campaign with dancing girls (for the men) and a smooth crooner (for the ladies). The dialogue crackles; it’s impossible not to sense the approach of early Sturges. (Walburn was to become a core member of Sturges’s company; in Thanks a Million, he hasn’t ascended yet to the comic stratosphere, as he does as Dr. Maxford in Christmas in July [1940] and Mayor Everett J. Noble in Hail the Conquering Hero [1944], but he’s plenty funny.)
For example:
(A knock on the door)
JUDGE CULLIMAN: Who’s there?
NED: Opportunity!
JUDGE: Oh, go away!
NED: Judge Culliman? Permit me to introduce myself. Lyman is the name, brother. Always happy to see a politician with his hands in his own pocket.
JUDGE: Scandals! we don’t want any.
NED: Now, let’s not be hasty, Judge. I’m not here to bandy words. I’m a busy man, but never too busy to be patriotic.
MR. GRASS: Listen, Mr. Lyman, we’re busy, too. What’s on your mind?
NED: Let me ask you a question, Judge. How would you like to deliver your campaign speech to a packed house every day and every night in every town and every city in the state, rain shine, fog, or hail?
JUDGE: Young man, I don’t need your help. In me you see a self-made man.
NED: Showing the horrors of unskilled labor, Judge.
MR. GRASS: What’s your idea, Lyman, if you have one? Spill it and get out.
NED: We surround the Judge here with music, singing, and dancing.
JUDGE: Dancing!?
NED: Exactly! Now, with my plan we’ll come into town like a Barnum and Bailey circus bringing fun and entertainment, along with our political candidate — and the show will be free, gentlemen, absolutely free. Why, we’ll have music, girls, and dancing. With this we’ll cinch the male vote. Next, we’ll have a crooner, a fine strapping youth whose dulcet tones come from way down in his abdomen –or belly, to you, Judge. With a crooner, gentlemen, the female vote is in the bag.
JUDGE: Why.. why… why, the whole thing is ridiculous. What am I supposed to do, a fan dance?
NED: You, why you’re the climax of it all. The star. You’ll stand out like a walrus in a goldfish bowl. You’ll be the fireworks at the top of the whole celebration. Just picture your spot, Judge. You’ll walk on the stage to an audience soggy with contentment, delirious with happiness, and groggy to the point they’ll listen to anything you have to say, no matter how trivial.
Ned lands the provisional gig and persuades the band to play along by tearing up their bus tickets to NYC. Eric agrees just so he can be heard on the radio. Most of the Arthur Johnston-Gus Kahn tunes in the film are harmless confections — Powell had moderately successful records of “Thanks a Million” and “Sittin’ on a Hilltop”; Louis Armstrong recorded “Thanks a Million” in ’35, and Jimmy Rushing recorded a version in the 1970s. The most interesting song for me is “A Pocketful of Sunshine,” the tune Eric sings as he steals the Judge’s thunder. As far as I can tell, the song was never recorded as a single, and hasn’t been covered. I think it’s one of Powell’s best film-song performances. He adjusts his laid-back affect to his job in the film: be big enough to become an entertainer big enough to become a political star. Roy Del Ruth, one of the consistently excellent comedy directors of the era, makes it visually exciting, especially the many little ways Eric obscures the Culliman campaign poster, substituting himself unawares. The song isn’t bad as a Depression-era cheer-up song, but it also does double duty as a parody of the genre of the Roosevelt Anthem (which is explicitly referenced by the satirical “Square Deal Party Song” performed by Powell and The Yacht Club Boys — which baldly quotes “Happy Days Are Here Again,” the FDR theme song).
The inevitable happens. Eric has become a showstopper. The audiences come to hear him and bristle at having to listen to the Judge. At an important campaign stop, the Judge is too drunk to go onstage and Ned falls into a pool of plaster, so Eric is tasked with delivering the scheduled speech. He’s endearing, unpretentious, and speaks about his own background as the son of an honest, hard-working small town Justice of the Peace — an uncanny foretaste of the style that Ronald Reagan would use successfully in the future.
The bosses of the Commonwealth Party see their opportunity to replace the Judge with Eric. Reluctant at first, Eric finally agrees because he knows he doesn’t have a chance to win the race but he’ll get plenty of opportunities to sing before big audiences. All he wants to do is sing.
Then things happen. The elegant, randy, superannuated wife of the party boss Kruger (played by Alan Dinehart) makes a play for Eric, who parries her by proposing marriage — to her outraged horror. The rival political party’s incumbent governor hires the Paul Whiteman Orchestra to counter Eric’s crooning charisma. There’s a long Whiteman performance — I can’t stand Whiteman’s kitschy glop, so I generally skip that scene. Still, it’s interesting, if one’s in the mood for grotesque syrupy schlock. Eric’s sweetheart Sally (Ann Dvorak), who has backed him all the way but feels he has become disrespectful and spoiled by his high contacts, leaves him. It looks like Eric is headed for victory in spite of his wishes, when the bosses make clear that they expect to be rewarded with kickbacks and offices. Eric publicly repudiates and exposes them (much like Capra’s Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington four years later, minus the hysteria). He urges his supporters to vote for his rival, and goes off to find Sally. The lovers are reunited and together with Ned speed off toward New York. In a final comic loop, they are chased by an army of motorcycle cops who recognize Eric as their golden boy and escort the company to the state line, singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” in chorus — leaving the faint impression that Eric may not have quite succeeded in escaping being elected governor, after all.
